Mirror Image

body had just been struck with an arrow. Nelson’s brows pulled together into a steep frown. Jack and Dorothy Rae only stared at Avery in stunned disbelief.
    “You knew about it?” Eddy demanded of Tate.
    “Yes.”
    “And you didn’t tell anybody?”
    “It wasn’t anybody’s business, was it?” Tate snapped furiously.
    “When did this happen?” Nelson wanted to know. “Recently?”
    “No, before the plane crash. Just before.”
    “Great,” Eddy muttered. “This is just fuckin’ great.”
    “Mind your language in front of my wife, Mr. Paschal!” Nelson roared.
    “I’m sorry, Nelson,” the younger man shouted back, “but do you have any idea what this will do to the Rutledge campaign if it gets out?”
    “Of course I do. But we have to guard against responding in a knee-jerk fashion. What good will flying tempers do us now?” After tempers had cooled, Nelson asked, “How did you find out about this… this abomination?”
    “The doctor’s nurse called headquarters this afternoon and asked to speak to Tate,” Eddy told them. “He had already left, so I took the call. She said Carole had come to them six weeks pregnant and asked for a D and C to terminate pregnancy.”
    Avery sank down onto the padded arm of the sofa and folded her arms across her middle. “Do we have to talk about this with them in here?” She nodded toward the public relations duo.
    “Beat it.” Tate nodded them toward the door.
    “Wait a minute,” Eddy objected. “They have to know everything that’s going on.”
    “Not about our personal lives.”
    “Everything, Tate,” Dirk said. “Right down to the deodorant you use. No surprises, remember? Especially not unpleasant ones. We told you that from the beginning.”
    Tate looked ready to explode. “What did this nurse threaten to do?”
    “Tell the media.”
    “Or?”
    “Or we could pay her to keep quiet.”
    “Blackmail,” Ralph said, playing a tune with the change in his pocket. “Not very original.”
    “But effective,” Eddy said curtly. “She got my attention, all right. You might have ruined everything, you know,” he shot at Avery.
    Trapped in her own lie, Avery had no choice now but to bear their scorn. She didn’t care what any of the others thought of her, but she wanted to die when she thought of how betrayed Tate must feel.
    Eddy strode to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a straight scotch. “I’m open to suggestions.”
    “What about the doctor?” Dirk asked him.
    “The nurse doesn’t work for him anymore.”
    “Oh?” Ralph stopped jingling coins. “How come?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Find out.”
    Avery, who had given the sharp command, came to her feet. She saw only one way to redeem herself in Tate’s eyes and that was to help get him out of this mess. “Find out why she no longer works for the doctor, Eddy. Maybe he fired her for incompetency.”
    “He? It’s a woman doctor. Jesus, don’t you even remember?”
    “Do you want my help with this or not?” she fired back, bluffing her way through a dreadful error. “If the nurse has been fired, she wouldn’t be a very believable extortionist, would she?”
    “Carole’s got something there,” Ralph said, glancing around the circle of grave faces.
    “You got us into this jam,” Eddy said, advancing on Avery. “What do you plan to do, brazen it out?”
    “Yes,” she said defiantly.
    She could almost hear the wheels of rumination turning throughout the room. They were giving it serious consideration.
    Zee broke the silence. “What if she has your medical records?”
    “Records can be falsified, especially copied ones. It would still be my word against hers.”
    “We can’t lie about it,” Tate said.
    “Why the hell not?” Dirk demanded.
    Ralph laughed. “Lying’s part of it, Tate. If you want to win, you’ve got to lie more convincingly than Rory Dekker, that’s all.”
    “If I become a senator, I’ve still got to look myself in the mirror every morning,” Tate said, scowling.
    “I won’t have to lie. Neither will you. No one will ever know about the abortion.” Avery stepped in front of Tate and laid her hands on his arms. “If we call her bluff, she’ll back down. I can almost guarantee that no local television station would listen to her, especially if she has been dismissed from the doctor’s staff.”
    If the nurse took her story to Irish McCabe—and KTEX would probably be her first choice, because it had the highest ratings—he